• The majority of common stocks have lifetime buy-and-hold returns that are less than one-month Treasuries.  

• In terms of lifetime dollar wealth creation, the best-performing 4% of listed companies explain the net gain for the entire US stock market as the performance of other stocks collectively matched U.S. Treasury bills. 

• The findings help to explain why poorly diversified active strategies most often underperform market averages. 

These are the findings of Hendrik (Hank) Bessembinder of Arizona State University (“Do Stocks Outperform Treasury bills?”).   In this presentation, Dr. Bessembinder will discuss  the distribution of compound, long-horizon stock returns, demonstrating properties that may not have been obvious, including that public stock markets are in many ways similar to venture capital.   Potential explanations for and implications of the findings are also considered. 

Hendrik (Hank) Bessembinder is Professor of Finance, and holds the Labriola Chair, at the W.P. Carey School of Business of Arizona State University. He completed his Ph.D. in Finance at the University of Washington, and previously held faculty positions at the Eccles Business School of the University of Utah, the Goizueta Business School of Emory University, and the Simon School of Business of the University of Rochester. 

Hank’s research and teaching interests focus on financial markets, including stock markets, foreign exchange markets, energy and commodities markets, trading costs, trading strategies, and long-term investment outcomes. His research has been extensively published in the top refereed
Finance journals. 

He is the Managing Editor of the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Associate Editor of the Journal of Financial Markets, and past Associate Editor of the Journal of Financial Economics and the Journal of Finance.  Hank has been a consultant to the New York Stock Exchange, Goldman Sachs, Barclay’s Global Investors, Interactive Data Corporation, Compass Lexecon, Baillie Gifford & Co., the United States Department of Justice, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, among others.